Category Archives: Quick fixes and tips

Any quick fixes and tips that GEEK! write about will be placed in this category.

EI System 1201 (DSG Retail) and RAM

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I own an EI System 1201 as one of my laptops, as I thought it was an excellent budget buy. I bought it in June ’08 with Vista Home Premium… and sadly 1GB of RAM. Vista and 1GB RAM don’t mix, trust me.

Anyway, I googled some RAM for the system and many sites are telling me that it only has 1 RAM module. However, I’m not totally sure of this. I’ve taken the back off and this is what I saw:

Image 1

Image 2

Correct me if I am wrong, but I believe that is two slots.

Many sites are claiming that it is one slot only, but I think there may be another one hidden underneath it.

I am also trying to get clarification on whether the maximum memory is 2GB. I’ve seen this site, Ei Systems Laptop Memory :: 1201 Laptop Memory :: Offtek.co.uk, the Memory Superstore, which claims that there is a 2GB module avaialble for the system.

It’s all very blurry for me – can you get 2GB in by either getting 2x 1GB modules or 1X 2GB module. If you’ve got any experiences in installing memory in this laptop, please post a comment? Have you ever got 2GB in?

Update 7.2.09 – Thanks very much to Mark (see comments) who has now can confirmed he can upgraded his EI System 1201 with a 2GB PC5300 667mhz of RAM, and that he is relatively sure there is only one slot. So my mistake if I got that wrong :).

Update 21.2.09 – Have ordered a 2GB piece of RAM for the laptop from Crucial, so will report back when I have it delivered and installed. Wish me luck.

I can confirm the RAM upgrade was successful.

Overheating in Dell laptops

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I was helping a friend fix a laptop that was constantly overheating. To be a little more specific, it was a Dell Inspiron 1300 laptop that is about 4 years old now. It would constantly shut down on random occasions, and we couldn’t work out why.

In the end we guessed that it was probably just a problem with a fan either not working or a blocked fan.

We took apart the back of the laptop, and had a look at the main fan.

And you would not believe what we saw – several millimeters of pure dust and fluff! It was horrifying. There was probably 3 or 4 years of dust and dirt bunged into a small gap in the fan space.

So we got some pressurised spray designed to blow out dust and took it all out. Worked perfectly afterwards.

But if you are experiencing problems with overheating, Dell may tell you that its just a case of sending the laptop to them and having a new motherboard fitted. Rubbish. All you need is a small screwdriver, some dust remover, and about 10 minutes of time. You should find the laptop works much better afterwards.

Make Guild Wars work on an older graphics card (or intergrated card)

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Now I’m not really the gaming type, but I do play the occasional games when I’ve got the spare time. Trouble is, my gaming computer isn’t really with me very regularly and most of the time I use a laptop. 

And my laptop, while perfectly powerful (Intel Pentium Dual Core @ 1.73ghz per core, 1GB RAM – which I hope to upgrade, Vista Home Premium) doesn’t really cope with games as it has a SiS Mirage 3+ Intergrated card (SiS M672MX).

The most common game I play is called Guild Wars. It’s a MMORPG that is installed and ran on your computer, rather than playing in a web browser. It’s a great game. You pay a one off fee like any other game you would buy in a shop, and its yours to keep forever. You can buy expansions which unlock new “worlds” but there’s nothing to force you to do so.

Anyhow, if you run an intergrated graphics card or older card, you can run Guild Wars (you can force it to run) but it won’t look particularly good even on the minimal settings. The problem I had was that you got weird diagonal lines coming from non NPCs and that characters did not look correct (almost as if it had corrupted). But if you have these problems or just poor performance, why not try the following.

Find a shortcut that links to the Gw.exe file. There should be one either on the desktop or on the Start Menu. Right click it, and click Properties. Now where it says target change it to:

“E:\Program Files\Guild Wars\Gw.exe” -dx8 -noshaders

E: ofcourse should be replaced to the letter of the drive Guild Wars is saved to. It’s probably C. Also, if you haven’t installed Guild Wars in the Program Files directory, you’ll need to locate where you installed.

Once you’ve done that, click OK. Those settings you added will force Guild Wars to run in DirectX 8 mode and turn off Pixel Shading. It will improve your frame rate as well as remove any issues with graphics rendering. 

You should notice a reasonable improvement. Some features with graphics will be removed, such as some Resurrection Shrines not looking the same. But it does mean you can run Guild Wars on older graphics cards.

Bare in mind these “mods” will only work on Guild Wars, so don’t try them on any other games. Just thought it may be useful to anyone who plays Guild Wars.

Windows Live Messenger and the annoying spam “viruses” (Warning and fix)

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Don’t you find it annoying when a contact (its a computer, not the real person sending you the link) sends you a link that looks perfectly realistic and you download it to find it’s actually a messenger “virus”.

I was a victim of one today and they are absolutely mind boggling. You don’t initially know they are what they are, but when you do they are enough to send you insane.

I had one of the most annoying ones today. You may want to know this as a warning. If you get a link from someone saying the following:

foto http://site.facebooky.net/ and then what looks like an image link with your email address on the end, do NOT open the link or download the attached file.

It’s one that spams all your contacts with the same link but with their email address, and then freezes your mouse so their is nothing you can do about it. When it’s finished driving all your friends mad with spam links, it hands the mouse back for 5 minutes, and then repeats itself again.

In the end I decided all I could do was wait until it wanted to spam everyone again, and then turn off the wifi adapter so it couldnt send any messages. Once it decided it couldn’t send anything and handed the mouse back, I checked the task manager for suspicious files.

One file in particular caught my eye: fxstaller.exe

A quick Google search found that this was the file causing the problem, and that many other people were having the same issue.

The file hides itself away in C:/Windows and although Windows reports it being there, it wont show up since its hidden. The best way i decided to kill it was (in Windows Vista) open up the start menu, search fxstaller.exe (but NOT pressing Enter) and when the file was listed, right click it and delete. And that ended my woes.

If you have the issue, that’s how you fix it.

View a whole log of your computer history

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Do you share your computer with somebody? Ever got onto your computer and had the suspision that someone might have been on it before you? As a matter of fact, I did today and I’ve found a program (included with Vista and I believe XP as well) that will tell you all you need to know.

It’s called the Event Viewer and it seems quite an obvious program but it does a lot more than you might think.

It basically monitors every program/service used (when it was started, when it was closed, whether there were any errors and whether it accessed the Windows system files), every log on and off (and whether someone attempted to log on but failed), and other events which are more advanced.

To get to it all you need to do is fling up the Vista start menu and type in Event Viewer and press enter, and for XP head to Start, Control Panel, Administrative Tools, Computer Management. When that comes up, click Event Viewer.

Here’s what it looks like in Vista:

 

Event Viewer (Windows Vista)

Event Viewer (Windows Vista)

 Opening up Windows logs gives you the full story on everything used:

 

Detailed

Detailed

So try it for yourself, you might be surprised with what you find!